Re: smtpmail help

[Ian Zimmerman]

dsoliver> Well, I changed (setq smtpmail-smtp-server
dsoliver> "smtp.earthlink.net") to (setq smtpmail-smtp-server
dsoliver> "smtp.charter.net"), and everything is working ok now. My
dsoliver> email account is with Earthlink, so I have always used their
dsoliver> smtp server; however, my ISP cable account is with Charter, so
dsoliver> I just switched to their smtp server. Is there a way I could
dsoliver> use earthlink's again without being kicked out? I'm not sure
dsoliver> what I would add to my .emacs file or even if it's
dsoliver> possible. My concern is if I needed to switch to my dial up
dsoliver> earthlink account. Of course I could just change back to Elnk
dsoliver> from Chrtr.

This has little to do with Emacs, but:

have you tried to _fetch_ your mail from earthlink before your send
experiment?  Many ISPs use the so-called POP before SMTP mechanism
for authentication.  The idea is that when you fetch (with POP or IMAP)
you have to authenticate with a password.  The server remembers the IP
from which you fetched, and if a send is attempted within a time window
(maybe 10 min.) from the same IP it assumes it's the same person,
which is known to be a customer.

Some ISPs also implement proper SMTP authentication, at last.
Gmail is one of those.  I recommend switching to one of them at least for
mail (see my address).

-- 
A true pessimist won't be discouraged by a little success.